Vaslow, Fred

ORAL HISTORY OF DR. FRED VASLOW
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
September 14, 2011
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is September the 14th, 2011. And I'm in the home of Dr. Fred Vaslow. Is that how you pronounce your name: Vaslow?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, but it's just Fred. Fred for now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Just Fred? [Laughs] Okay. All right, very good, Fred. Well, we appreciate you taking time to talk to us today. Why don't we just start - let me double check something real quick. I want to - since you're leaning forward, I want to make sure my focus is good.
MR. VASLOW: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, I think it's a little bit out of focus there. Yeah, there we go. Okay. So we'll start with - I always like to start - find out something about the person. Tell me where you were born and where you were raised, and something about your family.
MR. VASLOW: Chicago, Illinois, 1919, November 17th, 1919. And I went to school in Chicago and grew up in Chicago, and had a mother and father and brother and sister. And I guess - well, and then, when I got to be - let's see, I was going - oh.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's okay.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, well, should I skip all my childhood?
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I want to hear about that. I want to hear something about that.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, well, I don't know, it wasn't a particularly interesting childhood. I just grew up and -
MR. MCDANIEL: In Chicago, right?
MR. VASLOW: In Chicago, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: And went to grade school and high school and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: What did your father do?
MR. VASLOW: He was a photographer. My father was a photographer, and it was a mom-and-pop affair. He did all the work, and my mother would scrub the floors and arrange the bride's veils and so on and so forth.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And he would take pictures. He would have this flash gun, and he would pour the powder it, and raise the powder and it'd go flash, and everybody would - and when he would take baby pictures, he would drop a little doll off his head and say, "Kaboop," and the babies would laugh. And when I tried it, they would cry. So anyway, this is how I grew up, and I would work in the dark room, and Jasmine was talking about working in the dark room; she likes it, I hated it. And so, anyway, I went to high school and then started at the University of Chicago, and I'll skip to the War years, and -
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, let me ask you about that. So you - so if you were born in 1919, that would make you 92.
MR. VASLOW: It's 92 next month.
MR. MCDANIEL: 92 Next month?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I tell you, you must've eaten something when you were young that preserved you really well, because by looking at you nobody would ever guess that.
MR. VASLOW: Well, it's all the radioactivity I've been exposed to. [Laughs] So anyway -
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] So you were growing up - so in 1919 - so you were a child during the Depression years.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: How was that with your family and - ?
MR. VASLOW: Well, my - I think we just squeaked through. I think my father - as far as I remember, we had a mortgage and that the mortgage was coming due, and we had some sort of a bond or something that came through, which saved us from losing the house.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: And so we squeaked through. We squeaked through. I don't recall any hardship or so on. I think they saved, and my parents both worked very, very hard, far harder than I've ever had to do. So they raised me and sent me to the University of Chicago.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now did you say you were an only child?
MR. VASLOW: No, I had a brother and a sister, an older brother, and -
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, you had a brother and sister, okay.
MR. VASLOW: And a younger sister.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Brother's dead now, and my sister's still living in Washington DC.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: So -
MR. MCDANIEL: So you graduated high school in Chicago.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah. And then went to junior college. And then, after a couple of years, went to the University of Chicago, where I studied chemistry. And I guess I was - graduated and was doing graduate school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. What year did you graduate college?
MR. VASLOW: [Laughs] That's a long time ago.
MR. MCDANIEL: About '39 or '40, '41?
MR. VASLOW: Probably '39.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. VASLOW: Let's see, '39, I think I was -
MR. MCDANIEL: That would've made you 20.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. VASLOW: So about '39. I was 21, I think, 20 or 21 when I graduated college, and went right into the University of Chicago graduate school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: And about this time the draft board was a little - getting a little close, and I took up a little class for preparation for being drafted. And you've heard of the West Stands in Chicago, where they were making this first nuclear reactor?
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: So one of the things in this class I was taking, exercise class, getting ready for being drafted, was we were running in the West Stands and running over this thing. And I did not know that, right below me, where I was running, was this first nuclear reactor. So anyway, that and - what we knew was we saw Seaborg around. We knew, I guess, they were working on putting uranium in. And we would see these workmen coming out with black all over their faces. We didn't know what they were doing, but they were black.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, after a while, the war was on again, and I got on a project in Chicago that was called - what was it? - VCR-3, Volatile Compounds Research Number Three. And our object was to make a volatile compound of uranium. And if you were making a volatile compound of uranium, there was enough known before the war that if you're working on uranium and you were trying to get a volatile compound, you were working on a bomb.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: It was either that or energy. So about that time, anyone with a little chemistry knew that we were working on a bomb. And the way I got on this project, Volatile Compounds Research Number Three, we got a volatile compound of uranium, which would decompose if you looked at it. So they gave up and went to UF-6, which they're using at - they used at K-25 and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, after a while, about 1943, I guess, this project ended and went out to Ames, Iowa, where there was another project. And this was sort of a funny thing. The supposition was that the chemistry of plutonium would be similar to the chemistry of the rare earths. Well, it turned out this was completely wrong, but still Professor Spedding had a project there. And one of the interesting things about the project was they had two engineers there who had developed a way of making a very pure uranium billet, uranium metal. Up to then it'd been very difficult to get very pure uranium. And for these reactors at Oak Ridge, they needed very pure uranium. So these two guys at Ames, Iowa, had developed this very pure method of uranium, and they were producing these billets, just cylinders about an inch thick and about three or four inches long, of metallic uranium. Looked like any other metal. Sort of a -
MR. MCDANIEL: How were they producing that? How were they doing that?
MR. VASLOW: Okay. It was - you ever heard of a process called thermite?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, yes.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, okay. So they would mix this UF-4, uranium tetrafluoride, or maybe it was tetrachloride, I can't remember, with calcium metal, put it in a graphite cylinder about so high, so long - so put it in a graphite cylinder, put it inside a vacuum. And so this calcium reacted with the uranium, and you got uranium metal. And then they put it through another stage to purify it. So we had these little metal cylinders of uranium.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, my job at - first job at Ames, Iowa, was to handle, analyzing these little pieces and little strips of uranium metal.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Now when you were at Ames, who did you work for?
MR. VASLOW: Oh, I was working - it was - well, it started with - let's see. When I was working in Chicago, still the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and it wasn't until somewhat later that it became the Manhattan District.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: So I was working for Iowa State College, and they were working for the - at that time, I guess it was the Manhattan District.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: So - and also, Spedding being an expert chemist, so we were working - also working, on this project, on the chemistry of plutonium. So I learned about - when I was at Ames, I quickly learned about plutonium and nuclear reactors, what they did. And so, later on, after I finished - I stopped working on analyzing uranium, and we were doing chemistry - working on the chemistry of plutonium. Well, every group leader in chemistry on the project, must've been at least 10 of them, had his own way of separating plutonium from all this mess in the reactor.
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And Groves finally decided everybody would do Seaborg's method. And so, Groves, very wisely, decided everybody would work - so ever week, we would make a few changes in the chemistry of Seaborg's method of isolating plutonium, and so we would work - we would have - oh, we would have, oh, these tracer elements of plutonium. We'd have 2,000 or 3,000 counts of plutonium, and we would mess around and we would make UF-6. And I was in a room full of fumes of UF-6 and fluorine and so - all these nasty things and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And I guess the worst - the biggest hazard I had in all this war was, one day, I was - I had a fluorine generator, this little thing that generated this fluorine gas, and every once in a while - there was fluorine on one side and hydrogen on the other side of this little generator, and every once in a while, for some reason or another, they would mix and there would be a big explosion. This tank would go bang, and - big bang. And I was working over it one day, and - it was the middle of January, it was cold, and it just went bang. And my comrades there quickly grabbed me, pushed me under an ice cold shower in the middle of January, and so that was the worst experience I had in the war, I'd say.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. [Laughs]
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, after this project wound down, it was July, probably - maybe July of '45, and this project at Ames was winding down, and they needed people at Los Alamos, and I got a chance to go to Los Alamos, which was - well, an immense thrill to go out and see this, anyway.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So I drove out to Los - so anyway, I got - they accepted me, took me -
MR. MCDANIEL: So this was July of '45?
MR. VASLOW: It was July of '45, I guess.
MR. MCDANIEL: So this was, like, right before the bomb was dropped, wasn't it?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I got out to Los Alamos and then, if you've seen this paper of Ray Smith's there, in the paper, I drove up to this office in Santa Fe, whatever it is, and the town square.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And went up to see - it must've been Dorothy McCracken, and I guess that's her name. And I got directions to Los Alamos. And I drove up, and it was about 20 miles from Santa Fe to Los Alamos, and I had grown up in Chicago, and there are no mountains in Chicago. So I had driven through two mountain ranges that day, and then I'm driving up to Los Alamos, and the last stage to Los Alamos you drive up a winding narrow road. And on one side there's a steep, vertical cliff going up, and on the other side there's a steep vertical cliff going down.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: So - and here I was, driving, never been on a mountain before. And so, anyway, by the time I got to the top, I'd blistered my hands.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, so I signed in, got assigned to a dorm, and the first two papers I - they gave me to read were Los Alamos Primer One, Los Alamos Primer Two. Los Alamos Primer One says, "We're here to make a bomb." Los Alamos Primer Two says, "We're here about six or seven ways of making a bomb." Okay. So anyway, I checked into the dorm. It was a nice, pleasant room. And oh, a little aside, during the war, getting good quality meat was a problem. The meat you got, you'd chew and chew, and finally - here I got to the - what was it? - the mess hall, or whatever they called it. It was an Army base.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And here was this tall Indian - I don't know if he was a chief - but a tall Indian handing out these big, beautiful, wonderful steaks - thick ones. So anyway, got that. Anyway, back to work. I started at my desk, and put on my rubber gloves and a lab coat and shoe covers, and went to my desk and there were two or three bottles, one labeled Combat Unit Number Two, and Number Three, filled with little metal shavings of plutonium. Anyway, I was supposed to analyze them. Well, anyway, I went ahead and did my best to analyze them for whatever I was supposed to analyze them, and - anyway, about a week later - I had a white badge. Everyone who was a - everyone who was supposed to be a scientist had a white badge, and it means he was privileged to anything that was going on at Los Alamos. So everyone who had a white badge knew that, in a couple of days, there were going to be these tests over at Alamogordo a couple of hundred miles away. And having just driven over from Ames, I had a gas ration. Gas was rationed and I had some extra gas coupons, and so some - a couple of people needing gas coupons had asked me along, so I got to go along to -
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh!
MR. VASLOW: To Alamogordo, whatever it was, the place.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, we drove off that one day and camped overnight near Albuquerque, and then the next night we - they knew sort of where to go, and -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: We turned off the main road and drove over probably a dirt road into what seemed like a rocky - a little rocky hill somewhere. They knew where it was, I didn't. A rocky hill, and we slept overnight there, camped out overnight. And then, the next morning was cold and rainy, as we were expecting at some time this - to see the bomb going off. And it was rainy and cold, and we knew they wouldn't set it off. It was rainy and windy, and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So we were kind of wondering what to do. And then, off in the east - we were looking over this flat plain - off in the east we saw first either a red rocket or a green rocket, I don't know which was first. Then, a few minutes later, we saw this red rocket go over. And then, a few minutes later, this red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow - dome - red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow - growing and growing and growing. And then the mushroom cloud started to form. And we dived behind the rocks for cover, just wrecked a red leather jacket, that first nuclear damage. Anyway, so there was a thunderclap, not a terribly large one, but there was a thunderclap, and then this cloud seemed to be drifting over, so we ran as fast as we could to the car and got the hell out of there. Anyway, we got to Albuquerque, went to the hotel, the La Fonda, and toasted ourselves in great joy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course.
MR. VASLOW: Probably scaring the hell out of the security people. But anyway, we toasted ourselves and then continued back to Los Alamos. And we started work again. And then, about a week later, there was this announcement on the PA system. I was out at my desk. An announcement on the PA system, "Now hear this," or whatever the Army - it was an Army base - "Now hear this, and our first combat unit has been successfully dropped on Japan." Anyway, we cheered. Anyway, that was it. We cheered, and that was that. A few days later, the bomb - I guess there was sort of a false report the bomb - the war was ending, and Kistiakowsky, who was head of the explosive division there, was setting off firecrackers, 1,000 pounds of TNT for firecrackers, and the mesa was shaking. Anyway, the war didn't end for another day or two.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And so we celebrated. Well, maybe I'll give you a take on my feeling. This was a horrible thing to do. I mean, to drop this horrible thing and kill all these people. It was a horrible thing to do. And yet, well, it was my feeling this was a time of horrors. We had the fire bombings, the Nazis in Germany, we had the Japanese in Nanking, what they did, all these horrible things that had happened. And so this was a time of horrors, but it wasn't the horror that ended the war, it was the shock, the sheer shock of seeing one city go, two cities go. So it was the shock, not the horror. So, also, history doesn't tell us what might've happened, whatever might have. It might have - the Japanese might've surrendered. But all we know is what did happen. And a few days later the war ended, all these horrors ended, and for that I was thankful.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, so anyway, after that, I decided I didn't want to work on plutonium anymore, so I went to work in the High Explosive Division. And again, what to me is an amusing story, we - if you quit working in plutonium, then they gave you what was called a piss pass.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, that means you were to stay away from the Lab all day, and so I drove out and I drove around Los Alamos and got to a narrow point, and there were some cowboys herding some cows. And this was a narrow road, and it was just room for the car. So there I was herding these cows. I was a cowboy for a couple of hours. Anyway, I got back to Los Alamos, and then the next day they put me in the hospital and they gave me a gallon bottle to fill over. I had a few counts of plutonium, not much. Anyway, I worked in this High Explosive Division for a while, and then my draft board let go of me, so I could go back to school. So in December, I went back and started school again in Chicago.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: But my boss, the graduate - the professor I'd been working on doing graduate work with at Chicago was at Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh.
MR. VASLOW: And so after a while I spent a couple of months in Chicago, and he says, "Why don't you come down to Oak Ridge and do some research here?" So in April or May of 1946, I came down to Oak Ridge. That's when the Oak Ridge started.
MR. MCDANIEL: Who was your boss?
MR. VASLOW: George Boyd. I don't know if you ever knew him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: He's long gone.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, so I started working at Oak Ridge, and I lived in a dorm.
MR. MCDANIEL: In '46 was when you came? '46?
MR. VASLOW: '46, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: '46. Let me - before we go on there, let me ask you a question, or a couple of questions. Why did you decide you didn't want to work on plutonium? Was it because of the - ?
MR. VASLOW: Well, I'm what - I call it a physical chemist, and I didn't - and I was doing analytical - [audio skip]
MR. MCDANIEL: You're doing great. You're doing super, super; absolutely great. Okay, the power went off for a second, but we're back.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, so I'm a physical chemist, and in this High Explosive Division I was doing physical chemistry. I had TNT and some copper pipes running through, and I was measuring some sort of pressure or other. And so I was doing this in this way, and this was the Lab where they were making these explosive lenses, these explosive lenses, you know, these things, the - the bomb was a sphere, and they would start an explosion on the outside, and the explosion would come in and squeeze this plutonium until it was critical, and then it would explode.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, I was working this way, and they were making these high explosive lenses. And anyway, so - anyway, after a while, as I said, my draft board let me go, and I went back to Chicago. And George Boyd was down here, and I went - I came down here to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: And your draft board, they - you didn't have to - they didn't draft you as long as you were working on the project? Is that correct?
MR. VASLOW: Oh, yeah, yeah. Another one of these little stories. When I got to Los Alamos, I got a notice from my draft board saying I was 1-A. I gave it to my boss, and he gave it to the Colonel in charge, and the Colonel wrote to the draft board. I may be reached at PO Box 1663. You will keep this address confidential. So anyway, back to starting - to Tennessee. I drove up and got in a dorm and met my boss, met George, and started work there. The work was - it was sort of basic science. I was trying - sort of basic, the basic science, of the separation processes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Were you working at X-10?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, I was working at X-10.
MR. MCDANIEL: At the Lab? Yes, okay.
MR. VASLOW: X-10, yeah. And part of the project, every day, or almost every day, I would go up - I would take this little lead pig, little cylinder with lead on the outside, and put this little rabbit, what was called a rabbit, inside, and go up to the reactor and put this rabbit in the reactor and let it go, and spend overnight. And the next morning I would go and get out this reactor, this rabbit. It was sort of like one of these little air pipe things that you see in - used to see in a department store. You put a little cylinder in and it sends it in the reactor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And the next morning, came down, walked down, carried - put it in the pig, carried it down and put it behind some lead bricks, and started to work on this project. Anyway - so anyway, it was - worked out. I spent about two years or something doing that. You asked about relations to Black people there. There were some, to me, pretty unpleasant things at the time. That, first of all, I had never seen a black - black washrooms and white washrooms, black drinking fountains and white.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And what particularly sticks in my mind was one incident. We had a janitor there who was an extremely good janitor, just kept that place so neat and nice. And we asked - just told us to call us by our first names, us scientist people. And one day he called this secretary by her first name, and she just raised hell, and she got him sent to working the night shift, which was - kind of still sticks in my mind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And another incident, I guess somewhat later, we had - I was living with four or five other bachelors in a D house off of Tennessee Avenue, and we had a lady, a very nice lady, very conscientious lady, Black lady, and one day she asked me if I could help her move something. So I moved it over where she lived. And there was this hutment, this really awful - there were no windows. There was a potbellied stove and, I don't know, four or five women living inside this really horrible place.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: I didn't do anything about it, but anyway, so this was how I saw this horrible place. Well, anyway - well, what I -
MR. MCDANIEL: Because you'd never seen that before. I mean, you'd never witnessed that.
MR. VASLOW: Well, I didn't realize how really miserable it was, the segregation and -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, and I suppose the other point of interest was liquor. If you wanted to get liquor, you could go over to Oakdale and they had some rather poor quality liquor. Or if - most people went to Washington DC, loaded up their car - I had this station wagon with sort of a secret compartment in the back.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: I'd put my booze inside. And then, when I was in Washington, I went into this booze store where most Oak Ridgers would go, and I showed them my credit card check, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, "Oh, how is Mr. Weinberg?"
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] Is that right?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, that's funny.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, so anyway, it got back to Oak Ridge. And after a while, they started enforcing their liquor laws at the country club, and so they quickly voted Knoxville to be a wet county.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And I guess Oak Ridge, Tennessee - well, let's see, let's pause for a moment.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, absolutely.
MR. VASLOW: What - let's see, where should I go from here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk a little bit about - let's continue on with your work, you know, here in Oak Ridge. What were some of the things that you did, some of the projects that you worked on, and you know, through your career here?
MR. VASLOW: Well, okay. This project I was working on was basic science of separation process. I'll tell you the name of my thesis: Thermodynamics of Co-precipitation - which means nothing at all to you. Well, anyway, I got my degree, it was at Chicago, and from there I went to the Biology Division. And in Biology there seemed to be such wonderful thoughts for a physical chemist. You take, say, nitrogen. It's a plant. Here this plant takes this air and nitrogen, and just fixes it without any fuss, without any temperature. And here, in human beings, they have to have this super high temperature, pressure and so on, just a horrible mess. To think there are so many of these projects in Biology, and so I thought I would try my hand in Biology and sit on. Well, after a while I - one of the first projects I got there they told me to make some DNA. So I made some DNA, a goopy, pasty sort of stuff. I didn't really know what I was doing. Nobody else did. And then, I started work on enzymes, and this was with Dave Doherty. I don't know if you've ever heard of Dave. Dave was a very good biochemist, and I knew a little physical chemistry. So again, using things from the reactor, I could get certain chemicals that I would radiate in the reactor. And so using - I was measuring some properties of that enzymes, and that went on for a couple of years, and we got some very nice results, but I wasn't getting along with Hollaender very well. And also, there were all kinds of things going on in Europe, and I wanted to see Europe before it exploded, or something like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, Waldo Cohn was my boss at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And he'd just been visiting Denmark. And I - well, he knew I wanted to get out of the Biology Division, and he said, "Well, would you like to go and visit this lab in Denmark?" And [Laughs] -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: I just glowed, of course. So anyway, he wrote to this Professor K. Linderstrom Lang, who had a very big name in biochemistry, and would they take me? And they would. And so I went to this place, this Carlsberg Laboratorium. The Carlsberg Laboratorium was started by this brewer, Jacobsen, and he was so - he had started a scientific way of making beer, made good beer. And so he - when he - in his will, he established this laboratory, which would do basic science and - just in biology and physical chemistry and so on. And so there was this lab that was across the street from the brewery, and there were some wonderful people there, a couple of Nobel Prize winners at one time or other there. And Linderstrom Lang was a wonderful person. And so -
MR. MCDANIEL: A little bit different than with Hollaender, wasn't it?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah. So this was quite a thrill.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And of course, every day the brewer's big wagon with the big horse would come up and fill our cabinet with beer, so we were entitled to as much beer as we wanted. We never - well, almost never abused it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: For Easter they had a special beer called Paaskebryg, Easter Brew. And so one night several of us were working late, and we took a sample of this Easter brew. And after one sample of this Easter brew, you sort of lost your judgment, and we cleaned up the rest of the Easter brew, the Easter beer, Paaskebryg.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, we -
MR. MCDANIEL: So how long did you stay there?
MR. VASLOW: Well, it was almost three years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: I went on my own for the first - well, almost a year, and then I finally got a Public Health Service Fellowship, so I got a Public Health Service Fellowship. So I got this and sort of finished the project. And meanwhile, I had bought a car. I had enough money to buy a car, so we took a trip, and I asked two Americans, John Schellman and Charlotte Green, who came along, and we needed a fourth person, another girl. So I asked Aase, who's now my wife. So we asked - I asked Aase to go along. And so we went on this trip, about a month's trip to Europe, and visited all kinds of places. We ended up in the Riviera and just all kinds of wonderful things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, we came back, and about two months later Aase and I got married. About a month later, after that, Charlotte and John got married. So anyway -
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] So when was this? What year was this? This was...?
MR. VASLOW: This was about, I think, 19 - we got married in '53 -
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: And we came back to the U.S. in '55.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, I see.
MR. VASLOW: And I didn't have a job then, but - oh, it was up in Minnesota. What's his name? Oh, I can't remember his name. He offered me a Fellowship at the University of Minnesota, so I spent year at the University of Minnesota. What was his name, darn it?
MR. MCDANIEL: That's okay.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway - yeah, okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: We'll come back to it if we need to.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway - so anyway, about that time, I found George Boyd again, and he offered me a job at Oak Ridge. And so back in '57, we came back on January first of 1957, the Chemistry Division again. And, well, let's see, what was I working on? Oh, it was - again, it was sort of a separation process, ion exchange resins, so I was working on ion exchange resin. And I worked on that for a couple of years, and again, I have strange holes in my mind, and I wanted to do some work on something else, a very strange, crazy idea which nobody believes even yet. And so I got to work on that for a couple of years. I thought I got some good results, but nobody believed it. And so, then hard times came, and so my job at Oak Ridge ended. And so, after about a year, I got another job, this time at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. So I worked at writing Environmental Impact Statements at Argonne. Oh, I should mention also another excursion while I was working at Oak Ridge. So I got a chance to work at the - spend a year at the Risø - the Danish National Laboratory in Denmark, so I got another chance to spend another year in Denmark.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, came back - I came back and finished up this, and then, as I say, after a while, things got tough and they were cutting people at Oak Ridge, so I finally got a job at Argonne, but at - at Argonne, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. VASLOW: And I wrote Environmental Impact Statements for a while. I wrote all kinds of Environmental Impact Statements for different reactors. And then this slowed down and I got a job at Brookhaven, out at - out on Long Island.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Well, being out on Long Island was very pleasant, very pleasant place to be, but the job was horrible. But being at Brookhaven, fresh fish.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah.
MR. VASLOW: You could stop off on the way home and pick up some fresh fish, or fresh lobster.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, after a year of this ended and I finally retired from that, and finally came back to Oak Ridge for good in 1982, where I've been ever since.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? So you retired then and just came back to Oak Ridge?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Why did you decide to come back to Oak Ridge to retire?
MR. VASLOW: Well, we - when we left Oak Ridge in '74, so these jobs I had didn't look very promising, and so just as safety we have - we kept this house, this here house.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh.
MR. VASLOW: We kept this house. We didn't sell it. We rented it out. And we had friends in Oak Ridge. We had no particular friends in Argonne or Brookhaven.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So we just thought it the best thing. We had this house, we liked it, and so we came back to Oak Ridge in '82.
MR. MCDANIEL: And you were retired at that time?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: You were retired.
MR. VASLOW: And I've been here ever since; haven't moved.
MR. MCDANIEL: So what have you been doing since '82?
MR. VASLOW: Oh, not an awful lot, not very much. I sit at the Museum, the Energy Museum once a week, on the afternoons. And I do Recording for the Blind, and I do that two hours a week. I - somehow, I can still do that. They still are willing to have me. And I've done a little woodworking. Let's see, a few of the things I do, some gardening, I do an awful lot of crossword puzzles and so on. And we did quite a bit of traveling. So that's about -
MR. MCDANIEL: You keep yourself busy.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now see, the thing behind you, the -
MR. VASLOW: The loom? No, this thing is - this thing I made.
MR. MCDANIEL: No? Okay.
MR. VASLOW: No. My wife does some.
MR. MCDANIEL: Your wife does that?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah. I don't know, she should be here by now.
MR. MCDANIEL: I think she's here.
MR. VASLOW: Oh, she is? Okay. She -
MR. MCDANIEL: Now did you all have children?
MR. VASLOW: No children.
MR. MCDANIEL: No children?
MR. VASLOW: No children.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. And - but - so your wife is from -
MR. VASLOW: Denmark.
MR. MCDANIEL: She's from Denmark.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: You met her while you were there.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Did you say she's here?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, I believe she came in back there a few minutes ago.
MR. VASLOW: What - can I call her in? Would you like to meet her?
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] Sure, here in just a minute. Let's finish up the interview.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you came back to Oak Ridge because it was - you had friends here and you thought it would be a great place to -
MR. VASLOW: Retire.
MR. MCDANIEL: To retire to, and -
MR. VASLOW: And we have this house, this nice house.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: I like this, here. Okay, one of your questions here: What has made Oak Ridge an unusual community in which to live?
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And I think that's the people that were here. When Oak Ridge was first started, Knoxville was kind of a cultural desert, and there was no real culture. So people like Waldo Cohn founded the Symphony. I don't know who founded the Playhouse. I don't know if it was - I know the Eplers and the Kohlers, and there were people like the Coveyous and the Peeles who were interested in getting this place desegregated.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So there's just an awful - the Weinbergs and the Hollaenders and just an awful lot of people, very fine people, and I think it was the people in Oak Ridge who really made the place what it is. And I think some of that has been lost. I don't think there's the same - of course, as an old man, you always say it was better in the old days.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, of course.
MR. VASLOW: But -
MR. MCDANIEL: But you were one of those - I mean, you're the example of the Oak Ridger that came here from a metropolitan area -
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was used to those cultural activities.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: And so when you get a lot of those people together and they don't have that, they're going to create it themselves.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, I think so. So the Playhouse, the Arts Center, the Orchestra -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And I guess, somewhat later, there was the Recording for the Blind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: That was Tony Pleasanton and Bob Kernohan. That was a little later.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: But anyway, it was the sort of thing that I think this kind of Oak Ridger did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly, exactly, exactly.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, so -
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's great. Well, I sort of did something like that, to add - hopefully, add to the cultural impact of Oak Ridge.
MR. VASLOW: Well -
MR. MCDANIEL: The Secret City Film Festival is this weekend.
MR. VASLOW: Well, we've seen that film and thought it was very nice.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's - well, thank you, but I have a Film Festival, an International Film Festival.
MR. VASLOW: Oh, yeah, yeah, you're running that, yeah, okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: And this will be our - we start it Friday. It's this weekend.
MR. VASLOW: I see, I see.
MR. MCDANIEL: And it's our eighth year, so.
MR. VASLOW: I see, well, good for you. So you're the type that makes Oak Ridge -
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] Well, yes, but - I don't know, we'll see. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about, anything you want to discuss?
MR. VASLOW: I don't know. I don't know.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean, you know, there's -
MR. VASLOW: Let's see if there's anything on this.
MR. MCDANIEL: As I tell everybody that I interview, I said, now's your chance, if you want to get it off your chest, for posterity's sake, this is the opportunity. [Laughs]
MR. VASLOW: Well, I think that's pretty much the big things. There are all kinds of trivial things that you could think of, but I really don't -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Think there's much - I think I've gotten the big points, the best points.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right, right.
MR. VASLOW: I hope so.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly. Now, working at Oak Ridge, was it - was that - I mean, did you feel like that was a really good opportunity for you, and you learned a lot, and you achieved what you wanted to achieve?
MR. VASLOW: Well, in basic science, you try to get something - I mean, my - I have an enormous curiosity, so I have to know how things work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Hence my - this enormous curiosity is always bigger than my brain. But anyway, well, one of the interesting things, I suppose, to mention is one time, just out of curiosity, I was sitting in on a class on reactor physics. And across from me a couple of rows was Rickover and his, so I was sitting across from Rickover. And he would just sit there and glower, and had this you people. He learned something. I didn't, but he did. Anyway, so there were a lot of - yeah, there's a lot of - I mean, I just learned a great deal being here, about people and just science and so on. So, now as I said, I did this project, which to me is probably the best thing I ever did in my life, but nobody believes it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Nobody believes it.
MR. VASLOW: So is it wrong or right? I don't know. So I still believe it, but -
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me about that. You want to tell me about that project?
MR. VASLOW: Oh, it was something to do with the chemistry of water, and I was making some measurements. And normally, say, you were adding some salt to water and you measured the density, the volume, how the volume increases. So what I found was that, instead of increasing, at one point there was kind of a little bump in this thing. And this was very small, very hard to measure, and I thought I got it quite a few times, and repeated myself and so on. I thought it was a valid measurement. But at the same time, in chemistry, there was a lot of what people were finding - claiming to find kinks in their curves. So there was some sort of a little kink in the curve, and when people looked more carefully, there weren't any kinks; it was just an error or something like that. So they were - so the masses, the authorities, were just unwilling to look at anything that was supposedly a kink. And here, when I was coming up with these kinks and curves.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So I suppose that's a main reason for not believing it. So anyway, so this is probably my big disappointment in life, that it's still - I still don't know.
MR. MCDANIEL: You still - they kind of shut you down. They didn't let you continue on, and -
MR. VASLOW: They just - well, it just ended.
MR. MCDANIEL: It just ended.
MR. VASLOW: Well, things were getting tough, and the labs were having a downgrading, as they do fairly frequently. So anyway -
MR. MCDANIEL: What did you think of Weinberg?
MR. VASLOW: Well, I don't know. That's a hard question to ask. I've talked with him a couple of times, on a couple of occasions. I think, well, okay, I'll go back a little.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Back when the - back in the - probably in the '40s or so, there were the people, the scientists at the Lab, were hoping that the Lab would be taken over by the University of Chicago. But anyway, they turned it over to Union Carbide. This was to be sort of a - just an industrial base type thing, no basic research. Well, under Weinberg's leadership, I think, they had a small nuclear reactor, just no power at all, and they - there was this little reactor. Just can we put a little shielding around it and increase the pace a little? Yeah, here, this is working so nice. Can we add a little power and make a little shielding more? And this kept growing and growing, and - until finally, Weinberg, I guess, developed this idea of this Graphite Reactor, which is there, which is - finally the AEC let us do - let Oak Ridge do science. So this is one of the things we owe to Weinberg. So probably, perhaps, this persistence in developing the reactor is really what allowed Oak Ridge to grow into a major - I think a major research, scientific research center.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Of course with the Neutron Facility and the computers, it is now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, absolutely. It is. It is. All right, well, thank you, sir.
MR. VASLOW: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us, and -
MR. VASLOW: Well, I hope I haven't bored you, or -
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, no, not at all. Not at all.
MR. VASLOW: I may have said too much.
MR. MCDANIEL: I've been around Oak Ridge long enough, and heard enough stories, to where most of the time now I can kind of follow along. I kind of understand what people are talking about, unless they get too technical. But when you talk about people and events and places and things such as that -
MR. VASLOW: Well, I try to avoid being too technical.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, thank you so much, sir. I appreciate it.
MR. VASLOW: Okay.
[End of Interview]

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ORAL HISTORY OF DR. FRED VASLOW
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
September 14, 2011
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is September the 14th, 2011. And I'm in the home of Dr. Fred Vaslow. Is that how you pronounce your name: Vaslow?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, but it's just Fred. Fred for now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Just Fred? [Laughs] Okay. All right, very good, Fred. Well, we appreciate you taking time to talk to us today. Why don't we just start - let me double check something real quick. I want to - since you're leaning forward, I want to make sure my focus is good.
MR. VASLOW: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, I think it's a little bit out of focus there. Yeah, there we go. Okay. So we'll start with - I always like to start - find out something about the person. Tell me where you were born and where you were raised, and something about your family.
MR. VASLOW: Chicago, Illinois, 1919, November 17th, 1919. And I went to school in Chicago and grew up in Chicago, and had a mother and father and brother and sister. And I guess - well, and then, when I got to be - let's see, I was going - oh.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's okay.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, well, should I skip all my childhood?
MR. MCDANIEL: No, I want to hear about that. I want to hear something about that.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, well, I don't know, it wasn't a particularly interesting childhood. I just grew up and -
MR. MCDANIEL: In Chicago, right?
MR. VASLOW: In Chicago, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: And went to grade school and high school and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: What did your father do?
MR. VASLOW: He was a photographer. My father was a photographer, and it was a mom-and-pop affair. He did all the work, and my mother would scrub the floors and arrange the bride's veils and so on and so forth.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And he would take pictures. He would have this flash gun, and he would pour the powder it, and raise the powder and it'd go flash, and everybody would - and when he would take baby pictures, he would drop a little doll off his head and say, "Kaboop," and the babies would laugh. And when I tried it, they would cry. So anyway, this is how I grew up, and I would work in the dark room, and Jasmine was talking about working in the dark room; she likes it, I hated it. And so, anyway, I went to high school and then started at the University of Chicago, and I'll skip to the War years, and -
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, let me ask you about that. So you - so if you were born in 1919, that would make you 92.
MR. VASLOW: It's 92 next month.
MR. MCDANIEL: 92 Next month?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, I tell you, you must've eaten something when you were young that preserved you really well, because by looking at you nobody would ever guess that.
MR. VASLOW: Well, it's all the radioactivity I've been exposed to. [Laughs] So anyway -
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] So you were growing up - so in 1919 - so you were a child during the Depression years.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: How was that with your family and - ?
MR. VASLOW: Well, my - I think we just squeaked through. I think my father - as far as I remember, we had a mortgage and that the mortgage was coming due, and we had some sort of a bond or something that came through, which saved us from losing the house.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: And so we squeaked through. We squeaked through. I don't recall any hardship or so on. I think they saved, and my parents both worked very, very hard, far harder than I've ever had to do. So they raised me and sent me to the University of Chicago.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now did you say you were an only child?
MR. VASLOW: No, I had a brother and a sister, an older brother, and -
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, you had a brother and sister, okay.
MR. VASLOW: And a younger sister.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Brother's dead now, and my sister's still living in Washington DC.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: So -
MR. MCDANIEL: So you graduated high school in Chicago.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah. And then went to junior college. And then, after a couple of years, went to the University of Chicago, where I studied chemistry. And I guess I was - graduated and was doing graduate school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. What year did you graduate college?
MR. VASLOW: [Laughs] That's a long time ago.
MR. MCDANIEL: About '39 or '40, '41?
MR. VASLOW: Probably '39.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. VASLOW: Let's see, '39, I think I was -
MR. MCDANIEL: That would've made you 20.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. VASLOW: So about '39. I was 21, I think, 20 or 21 when I graduated college, and went right into the University of Chicago graduate school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: And about this time the draft board was a little - getting a little close, and I took up a little class for preparation for being drafted. And you've heard of the West Stands in Chicago, where they were making this first nuclear reactor?
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: So one of the things in this class I was taking, exercise class, getting ready for being drafted, was we were running in the West Stands and running over this thing. And I did not know that, right below me, where I was running, was this first nuclear reactor. So anyway, that and - what we knew was we saw Seaborg around. We knew, I guess, they were working on putting uranium in. And we would see these workmen coming out with black all over their faces. We didn't know what they were doing, but they were black.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, after a while, the war was on again, and I got on a project in Chicago that was called - what was it? - VCR-3, Volatile Compounds Research Number Three. And our object was to make a volatile compound of uranium. And if you were making a volatile compound of uranium, there was enough known before the war that if you're working on uranium and you were trying to get a volatile compound, you were working on a bomb.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: It was either that or energy. So about that time, anyone with a little chemistry knew that we were working on a bomb. And the way I got on this project, Volatile Compounds Research Number Three, we got a volatile compound of uranium, which would decompose if you looked at it. So they gave up and went to UF-6, which they're using at - they used at K-25 and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, after a while, about 1943, I guess, this project ended and went out to Ames, Iowa, where there was another project. And this was sort of a funny thing. The supposition was that the chemistry of plutonium would be similar to the chemistry of the rare earths. Well, it turned out this was completely wrong, but still Professor Spedding had a project there. And one of the interesting things about the project was they had two engineers there who had developed a way of making a very pure uranium billet, uranium metal. Up to then it'd been very difficult to get very pure uranium. And for these reactors at Oak Ridge, they needed very pure uranium. So these two guys at Ames, Iowa, had developed this very pure method of uranium, and they were producing these billets, just cylinders about an inch thick and about three or four inches long, of metallic uranium. Looked like any other metal. Sort of a -
MR. MCDANIEL: How were they producing that? How were they doing that?
MR. VASLOW: Okay. It was - you ever heard of a process called thermite?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, yes.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, okay. So they would mix this UF-4, uranium tetrafluoride, or maybe it was tetrachloride, I can't remember, with calcium metal, put it in a graphite cylinder about so high, so long - so put it in a graphite cylinder, put it inside a vacuum. And so this calcium reacted with the uranium, and you got uranium metal. And then they put it through another stage to purify it. So we had these little metal cylinders of uranium.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, my job at - first job at Ames, Iowa, was to handle, analyzing these little pieces and little strips of uranium metal.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Now when you were at Ames, who did you work for?
MR. VASLOW: Oh, I was working - it was - well, it started with - let's see. When I was working in Chicago, still the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and it wasn't until somewhat later that it became the Manhattan District.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: So I was working for Iowa State College, and they were working for the - at that time, I guess it was the Manhattan District.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: So - and also, Spedding being an expert chemist, so we were working - also working, on this project, on the chemistry of plutonium. So I learned about - when I was at Ames, I quickly learned about plutonium and nuclear reactors, what they did. And so, later on, after I finished - I stopped working on analyzing uranium, and we were doing chemistry - working on the chemistry of plutonium. Well, every group leader in chemistry on the project, must've been at least 10 of them, had his own way of separating plutonium from all this mess in the reactor.
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And Groves finally decided everybody would do Seaborg's method. And so, Groves, very wisely, decided everybody would work - so ever week, we would make a few changes in the chemistry of Seaborg's method of isolating plutonium, and so we would work - we would have - oh, we would have, oh, these tracer elements of plutonium. We'd have 2,000 or 3,000 counts of plutonium, and we would mess around and we would make UF-6. And I was in a room full of fumes of UF-6 and fluorine and so - all these nasty things and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And I guess the worst - the biggest hazard I had in all this war was, one day, I was - I had a fluorine generator, this little thing that generated this fluorine gas, and every once in a while - there was fluorine on one side and hydrogen on the other side of this little generator, and every once in a while, for some reason or another, they would mix and there would be a big explosion. This tank would go bang, and - big bang. And I was working over it one day, and - it was the middle of January, it was cold, and it just went bang. And my comrades there quickly grabbed me, pushed me under an ice cold shower in the middle of January, and so that was the worst experience I had in the war, I'd say.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. [Laughs]
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, after this project wound down, it was July, probably - maybe July of '45, and this project at Ames was winding down, and they needed people at Los Alamos, and I got a chance to go to Los Alamos, which was - well, an immense thrill to go out and see this, anyway.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So I drove out to Los - so anyway, I got - they accepted me, took me -
MR. MCDANIEL: So this was July of '45?
MR. VASLOW: It was July of '45, I guess.
MR. MCDANIEL: So this was, like, right before the bomb was dropped, wasn't it?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I got out to Los Alamos and then, if you've seen this paper of Ray Smith's there, in the paper, I drove up to this office in Santa Fe, whatever it is, and the town square.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And went up to see - it must've been Dorothy McCracken, and I guess that's her name. And I got directions to Los Alamos. And I drove up, and it was about 20 miles from Santa Fe to Los Alamos, and I had grown up in Chicago, and there are no mountains in Chicago. So I had driven through two mountain ranges that day, and then I'm driving up to Los Alamos, and the last stage to Los Alamos you drive up a winding narrow road. And on one side there's a steep, vertical cliff going up, and on the other side there's a steep vertical cliff going down.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: So - and here I was, driving, never been on a mountain before. And so, anyway, by the time I got to the top, I'd blistered my hands.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, so I signed in, got assigned to a dorm, and the first two papers I - they gave me to read were Los Alamos Primer One, Los Alamos Primer Two. Los Alamos Primer One says, "We're here to make a bomb." Los Alamos Primer Two says, "We're here about six or seven ways of making a bomb." Okay. So anyway, I checked into the dorm. It was a nice, pleasant room. And oh, a little aside, during the war, getting good quality meat was a problem. The meat you got, you'd chew and chew, and finally - here I got to the - what was it? - the mess hall, or whatever they called it. It was an Army base.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And here was this tall Indian - I don't know if he was a chief - but a tall Indian handing out these big, beautiful, wonderful steaks - thick ones. So anyway, got that. Anyway, back to work. I started at my desk, and put on my rubber gloves and a lab coat and shoe covers, and went to my desk and there were two or three bottles, one labeled Combat Unit Number Two, and Number Three, filled with little metal shavings of plutonium. Anyway, I was supposed to analyze them. Well, anyway, I went ahead and did my best to analyze them for whatever I was supposed to analyze them, and - anyway, about a week later - I had a white badge. Everyone who was a - everyone who was supposed to be a scientist had a white badge, and it means he was privileged to anything that was going on at Los Alamos. So everyone who had a white badge knew that, in a couple of days, there were going to be these tests over at Alamogordo a couple of hundred miles away. And having just driven over from Ames, I had a gas ration. Gas was rationed and I had some extra gas coupons, and so some - a couple of people needing gas coupons had asked me along, so I got to go along to -
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh!
MR. VASLOW: To Alamogordo, whatever it was, the place.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, we drove off that one day and camped overnight near Albuquerque, and then the next night we - they knew sort of where to go, and -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: We turned off the main road and drove over probably a dirt road into what seemed like a rocky - a little rocky hill somewhere. They knew where it was, I didn't. A rocky hill, and we slept overnight there, camped out overnight. And then, the next morning was cold and rainy, as we were expecting at some time this - to see the bomb going off. And it was rainy and cold, and we knew they wouldn't set it off. It was rainy and windy, and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So we were kind of wondering what to do. And then, off in the east - we were looking over this flat plain - off in the east we saw first either a red rocket or a green rocket, I don't know which was first. Then, a few minutes later, we saw this red rocket go over. And then, a few minutes later, this red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow - dome - red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow, red glow - growing and growing and growing. And then the mushroom cloud started to form. And we dived behind the rocks for cover, just wrecked a red leather jacket, that first nuclear damage. Anyway, so there was a thunderclap, not a terribly large one, but there was a thunderclap, and then this cloud seemed to be drifting over, so we ran as fast as we could to the car and got the hell out of there. Anyway, we got to Albuquerque, went to the hotel, the La Fonda, and toasted ourselves in great joy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of course.
MR. VASLOW: Probably scaring the hell out of the security people. But anyway, we toasted ourselves and then continued back to Los Alamos. And we started work again. And then, about a week later, there was this announcement on the PA system. I was out at my desk. An announcement on the PA system, "Now hear this," or whatever the Army - it was an Army base - "Now hear this, and our first combat unit has been successfully dropped on Japan." Anyway, we cheered. Anyway, that was it. We cheered, and that was that. A few days later, the bomb - I guess there was sort of a false report the bomb - the war was ending, and Kistiakowsky, who was head of the explosive division there, was setting off firecrackers, 1,000 pounds of TNT for firecrackers, and the mesa was shaking. Anyway, the war didn't end for another day or two.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And so we celebrated. Well, maybe I'll give you a take on my feeling. This was a horrible thing to do. I mean, to drop this horrible thing and kill all these people. It was a horrible thing to do. And yet, well, it was my feeling this was a time of horrors. We had the fire bombings, the Nazis in Germany, we had the Japanese in Nanking, what they did, all these horrible things that had happened. And so this was a time of horrors, but it wasn't the horror that ended the war, it was the shock, the sheer shock of seeing one city go, two cities go. So it was the shock, not the horror. So, also, history doesn't tell us what might've happened, whatever might have. It might have - the Japanese might've surrendered. But all we know is what did happen. And a few days later the war ended, all these horrors ended, and for that I was thankful.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, so anyway, after that, I decided I didn't want to work on plutonium anymore, so I went to work in the High Explosive Division. And again, what to me is an amusing story, we - if you quit working in plutonium, then they gave you what was called a piss pass.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, that means you were to stay away from the Lab all day, and so I drove out and I drove around Los Alamos and got to a narrow point, and there were some cowboys herding some cows. And this was a narrow road, and it was just room for the car. So there I was herding these cows. I was a cowboy for a couple of hours. Anyway, I got back to Los Alamos, and then the next day they put me in the hospital and they gave me a gallon bottle to fill over. I had a few counts of plutonium, not much. Anyway, I worked in this High Explosive Division for a while, and then my draft board let go of me, so I could go back to school. So in December, I went back and started school again in Chicago.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: But my boss, the graduate - the professor I'd been working on doing graduate work with at Chicago was at Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh.
MR. VASLOW: And so after a while I spent a couple of months in Chicago, and he says, "Why don't you come down to Oak Ridge and do some research here?" So in April or May of 1946, I came down to Oak Ridge. That's when the Oak Ridge started.
MR. MCDANIEL: Who was your boss?
MR. VASLOW: George Boyd. I don't know if you ever knew him.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: He's long gone.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, so I started working at Oak Ridge, and I lived in a dorm.
MR. MCDANIEL: In '46 was when you came? '46?
MR. VASLOW: '46, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: '46. Let me - before we go on there, let me ask you a question, or a couple of questions. Why did you decide you didn't want to work on plutonium? Was it because of the - ?
MR. VASLOW: Well, I'm what - I call it a physical chemist, and I didn't - and I was doing analytical - [audio skip]
MR. MCDANIEL: You're doing great. You're doing super, super; absolutely great. Okay, the power went off for a second, but we're back.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, so I'm a physical chemist, and in this High Explosive Division I was doing physical chemistry. I had TNT and some copper pipes running through, and I was measuring some sort of pressure or other. And so I was doing this in this way, and this was the Lab where they were making these explosive lenses, these explosive lenses, you know, these things, the - the bomb was a sphere, and they would start an explosion on the outside, and the explosion would come in and squeeze this plutonium until it was critical, and then it would explode.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, I was working this way, and they were making these high explosive lenses. And anyway, so - anyway, after a while, as I said, my draft board let me go, and I went back to Chicago. And George Boyd was down here, and I went - I came down here to Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: And your draft board, they - you didn't have to - they didn't draft you as long as you were working on the project? Is that correct?
MR. VASLOW: Oh, yeah, yeah. Another one of these little stories. When I got to Los Alamos, I got a notice from my draft board saying I was 1-A. I gave it to my boss, and he gave it to the Colonel in charge, and the Colonel wrote to the draft board. I may be reached at PO Box 1663. You will keep this address confidential. So anyway, back to starting - to Tennessee. I drove up and got in a dorm and met my boss, met George, and started work there. The work was - it was sort of basic science. I was trying - sort of basic, the basic science, of the separation processes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Were you working at X-10?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, I was working at X-10.
MR. MCDANIEL: At the Lab? Yes, okay.
MR. VASLOW: X-10, yeah. And part of the project, every day, or almost every day, I would go up - I would take this little lead pig, little cylinder with lead on the outside, and put this little rabbit, what was called a rabbit, inside, and go up to the reactor and put this rabbit in the reactor and let it go, and spend overnight. And the next morning I would go and get out this reactor, this rabbit. It was sort of like one of these little air pipe things that you see in - used to see in a department store. You put a little cylinder in and it sends it in the reactor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And the next morning, came down, walked down, carried - put it in the pig, carried it down and put it behind some lead bricks, and started to work on this project. Anyway - so anyway, it was - worked out. I spent about two years or something doing that. You asked about relations to Black people there. There were some, to me, pretty unpleasant things at the time. That, first of all, I had never seen a black - black washrooms and white washrooms, black drinking fountains and white.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And what particularly sticks in my mind was one incident. We had a janitor there who was an extremely good janitor, just kept that place so neat and nice. And we asked - just told us to call us by our first names, us scientist people. And one day he called this secretary by her first name, and she just raised hell, and she got him sent to working the night shift, which was - kind of still sticks in my mind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And another incident, I guess somewhat later, we had - I was living with four or five other bachelors in a D house off of Tennessee Avenue, and we had a lady, a very nice lady, very conscientious lady, Black lady, and one day she asked me if I could help her move something. So I moved it over where she lived. And there was this hutment, this really awful - there were no windows. There was a potbellied stove and, I don't know, four or five women living inside this really horrible place.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: I didn't do anything about it, but anyway, so this was how I saw this horrible place. Well, anyway - well, what I -
MR. MCDANIEL: Because you'd never seen that before. I mean, you'd never witnessed that.
MR. VASLOW: Well, I didn't realize how really miserable it was, the segregation and -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, and I suppose the other point of interest was liquor. If you wanted to get liquor, you could go over to Oakdale and they had some rather poor quality liquor. Or if - most people went to Washington DC, loaded up their car - I had this station wagon with sort of a secret compartment in the back.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: I'd put my booze inside. And then, when I was in Washington, I went into this booze store where most Oak Ridgers would go, and I showed them my credit card check, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, "Oh, how is Mr. Weinberg?"
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] Is that right?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, that's funny.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, so anyway, it got back to Oak Ridge. And after a while, they started enforcing their liquor laws at the country club, and so they quickly voted Knoxville to be a wet county.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And I guess Oak Ridge, Tennessee - well, let's see, let's pause for a moment.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, absolutely.
MR. VASLOW: What - let's see, where should I go from here.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's talk a little bit about - let's continue on with your work, you know, here in Oak Ridge. What were some of the things that you did, some of the projects that you worked on, and you know, through your career here?
MR. VASLOW: Well, okay. This project I was working on was basic science of separation process. I'll tell you the name of my thesis: Thermodynamics of Co-precipitation - which means nothing at all to you. Well, anyway, I got my degree, it was at Chicago, and from there I went to the Biology Division. And in Biology there seemed to be such wonderful thoughts for a physical chemist. You take, say, nitrogen. It's a plant. Here this plant takes this air and nitrogen, and just fixes it without any fuss, without any temperature. And here, in human beings, they have to have this super high temperature, pressure and so on, just a horrible mess. To think there are so many of these projects in Biology, and so I thought I would try my hand in Biology and sit on. Well, after a while I - one of the first projects I got there they told me to make some DNA. So I made some DNA, a goopy, pasty sort of stuff. I didn't really know what I was doing. Nobody else did. And then, I started work on enzymes, and this was with Dave Doherty. I don't know if you've ever heard of Dave. Dave was a very good biochemist, and I knew a little physical chemistry. So again, using things from the reactor, I could get certain chemicals that I would radiate in the reactor. And so using - I was measuring some properties of that enzymes, and that went on for a couple of years, and we got some very nice results, but I wasn't getting along with Hollaender very well. And also, there were all kinds of things going on in Europe, and I wanted to see Europe before it exploded, or something like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, Waldo Cohn was my boss at the time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And he'd just been visiting Denmark. And I - well, he knew I wanted to get out of the Biology Division, and he said, "Well, would you like to go and visit this lab in Denmark?" And [Laughs] -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: I just glowed, of course. So anyway, he wrote to this Professor K. Linderstrom Lang, who had a very big name in biochemistry, and would they take me? And they would. And so I went to this place, this Carlsberg Laboratorium. The Carlsberg Laboratorium was started by this brewer, Jacobsen, and he was so - he had started a scientific way of making beer, made good beer. And so he - when he - in his will, he established this laboratory, which would do basic science and - just in biology and physical chemistry and so on. And so there was this lab that was across the street from the brewery, and there were some wonderful people there, a couple of Nobel Prize winners at one time or other there. And Linderstrom Lang was a wonderful person. And so -
MR. MCDANIEL: A little bit different than with Hollaender, wasn't it?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah. So this was quite a thrill.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And of course, every day the brewer's big wagon with the big horse would come up and fill our cabinet with beer, so we were entitled to as much beer as we wanted. We never - well, almost never abused it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: For Easter they had a special beer called Paaskebryg, Easter Brew. And so one night several of us were working late, and we took a sample of this Easter brew. And after one sample of this Easter brew, you sort of lost your judgment, and we cleaned up the rest of the Easter brew, the Easter beer, Paaskebryg.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, we -
MR. MCDANIEL: So how long did you stay there?
MR. VASLOW: Well, it was almost three years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: I went on my own for the first - well, almost a year, and then I finally got a Public Health Service Fellowship, so I got a Public Health Service Fellowship. So I got this and sort of finished the project. And meanwhile, I had bought a car. I had enough money to buy a car, so we took a trip, and I asked two Americans, John Schellman and Charlotte Green, who came along, and we needed a fourth person, another girl. So I asked Aase, who's now my wife. So we asked - I asked Aase to go along. And so we went on this trip, about a month's trip to Europe, and visited all kinds of places. We ended up in the Riviera and just all kinds of wonderful things.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway, we came back, and about two months later Aase and I got married. About a month later, after that, Charlotte and John got married. So anyway -
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] So when was this? What year was this? This was...?
MR. VASLOW: This was about, I think, 19 - we got married in '53 -
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: And we came back to the U.S. in '55.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, I see.
MR. VASLOW: And I didn't have a job then, but - oh, it was up in Minnesota. What's his name? Oh, I can't remember his name. He offered me a Fellowship at the University of Minnesota, so I spent year at the University of Minnesota. What was his name, darn it?
MR. MCDANIEL: That's okay.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway - yeah, okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: We'll come back to it if we need to.
MR. VASLOW: Anyway - so anyway, about that time, I found George Boyd again, and he offered me a job at Oak Ridge. And so back in '57, we came back on January first of 1957, the Chemistry Division again. And, well, let's see, what was I working on? Oh, it was - again, it was sort of a separation process, ion exchange resins, so I was working on ion exchange resin. And I worked on that for a couple of years, and again, I have strange holes in my mind, and I wanted to do some work on something else, a very strange, crazy idea which nobody believes even yet. And so I got to work on that for a couple of years. I thought I got some good results, but nobody believed it. And so, then hard times came, and so my job at Oak Ridge ended. And so, after about a year, I got another job, this time at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. So I worked at writing Environmental Impact Statements at Argonne. Oh, I should mention also another excursion while I was working at Oak Ridge. So I got a chance to work at the - spend a year at the Risø - the Danish National Laboratory in Denmark, so I got another chance to spend another year in Denmark.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, came back - I came back and finished up this, and then, as I say, after a while, things got tough and they were cutting people at Oak Ridge, so I finally got a job at Argonne, but at - at Argonne, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. VASLOW: And I wrote Environmental Impact Statements for a while. I wrote all kinds of Environmental Impact Statements for different reactors. And then this slowed down and I got a job at Brookhaven, out at - out on Long Island.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Well, being out on Long Island was very pleasant, very pleasant place to be, but the job was horrible. But being at Brookhaven, fresh fish.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, yeah.
MR. VASLOW: You could stop off on the way home and pick up some fresh fish, or fresh lobster.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: So anyway, after a year of this ended and I finally retired from that, and finally came back to Oak Ridge for good in 1982, where I've been ever since.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? So you retired then and just came back to Oak Ridge?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Why did you decide to come back to Oak Ridge to retire?
MR. VASLOW: Well, we - when we left Oak Ridge in '74, so these jobs I had didn't look very promising, and so just as safety we have - we kept this house, this here house.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh.
MR. VASLOW: We kept this house. We didn't sell it. We rented it out. And we had friends in Oak Ridge. We had no particular friends in Argonne or Brookhaven.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So we just thought it the best thing. We had this house, we liked it, and so we came back to Oak Ridge in '82.
MR. MCDANIEL: And you were retired at that time?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: You were retired.
MR. VASLOW: And I've been here ever since; haven't moved.
MR. MCDANIEL: So what have you been doing since '82?
MR. VASLOW: Oh, not an awful lot, not very much. I sit at the Museum, the Energy Museum once a week, on the afternoons. And I do Recording for the Blind, and I do that two hours a week. I - somehow, I can still do that. They still are willing to have me. And I've done a little woodworking. Let's see, a few of the things I do, some gardening, I do an awful lot of crossword puzzles and so on. And we did quite a bit of traveling. So that's about -
MR. MCDANIEL: You keep yourself busy.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now see, the thing behind you, the -
MR. VASLOW: The loom? No, this thing is - this thing I made.
MR. MCDANIEL: No? Okay.
MR. VASLOW: No. My wife does some.
MR. MCDANIEL: Your wife does that?
MR. VASLOW: Yeah. I don't know, she should be here by now.
MR. MCDANIEL: I think she's here.
MR. VASLOW: Oh, she is? Okay. She -
MR. MCDANIEL: Now did you all have children?
MR. VASLOW: No children.
MR. MCDANIEL: No children?
MR. VASLOW: No children.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. And - but - so your wife is from -
MR. VASLOW: Denmark.
MR. MCDANIEL: She's from Denmark.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: You met her while you were there.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Did you say she's here?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, I believe she came in back there a few minutes ago.
MR. VASLOW: What - can I call her in? Would you like to meet her?
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] Sure, here in just a minute. Let's finish up the interview.
MR. VASLOW: Okay, okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: So you came back to Oak Ridge because it was - you had friends here and you thought it would be a great place to -
MR. VASLOW: Retire.
MR. MCDANIEL: To retire to, and -
MR. VASLOW: And we have this house, this nice house.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: I like this, here. Okay, one of your questions here: What has made Oak Ridge an unusual community in which to live?
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And I think that's the people that were here. When Oak Ridge was first started, Knoxville was kind of a cultural desert, and there was no real culture. So people like Waldo Cohn founded the Symphony. I don't know who founded the Playhouse. I don't know if it was - I know the Eplers and the Kohlers, and there were people like the Coveyous and the Peeles who were interested in getting this place desegregated.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So there's just an awful - the Weinbergs and the Hollaenders and just an awful lot of people, very fine people, and I think it was the people in Oak Ridge who really made the place what it is. And I think some of that has been lost. I don't think there's the same - of course, as an old man, you always say it was better in the old days.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, of course.
MR. VASLOW: But -
MR. MCDANIEL: But you were one of those - I mean, you're the example of the Oak Ridger that came here from a metropolitan area -
MR. VASLOW: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was used to those cultural activities.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: And so when you get a lot of those people together and they don't have that, they're going to create it themselves.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, yeah, I think so. So the Playhouse, the Arts Center, the Orchestra -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: And I guess, somewhat later, there was the Recording for the Blind.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: That was Tony Pleasanton and Bob Kernohan. That was a little later.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. VASLOW: But anyway, it was the sort of thing that I think this kind of Oak Ridger did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly, exactly, exactly.
MR. VASLOW: Yeah, so -
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's great. Well, I sort of did something like that, to add - hopefully, add to the cultural impact of Oak Ridge.
MR. VASLOW: Well -
MR. MCDANIEL: The Secret City Film Festival is this weekend.
MR. VASLOW: Well, we've seen that film and thought it was very nice.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's - well, thank you, but I have a Film Festival, an International Film Festival.
MR. VASLOW: Oh, yeah, yeah, you're running that, yeah, okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: And this will be our - we start it Friday. It's this weekend.
MR. VASLOW: I see, I see.
MR. MCDANIEL: And it's our eighth year, so.
MR. VASLOW: I see, well, good for you. So you're the type that makes Oak Ridge -
MR. MCDANIEL: [Laughs] Well, yes, but - I don't know, we'll see. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about, anything you want to discuss?
MR. VASLOW: I don't know. I don't know.
MR. MCDANIEL: I mean, you know, there's -
MR. VASLOW: Let's see if there's anything on this.
MR. MCDANIEL: As I tell everybody that I interview, I said, now's your chance, if you want to get it off your chest, for posterity's sake, this is the opportunity. [Laughs]
MR. VASLOW: Well, I think that's pretty much the big things. There are all kinds of trivial things that you could think of, but I really don't -
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Think there's much - I think I've gotten the big points, the best points.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right, right.
MR. VASLOW: I hope so.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly. Now, working at Oak Ridge, was it - was that - I mean, did you feel like that was a really good opportunity for you, and you learned a lot, and you achieved what you wanted to achieve?
MR. VASLOW: Well, in basic science, you try to get something - I mean, my - I have an enormous curiosity, so I have to know how things work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Hence my - this enormous curiosity is always bigger than my brain. But anyway, well, one of the interesting things, I suppose, to mention is one time, just out of curiosity, I was sitting in on a class on reactor physics. And across from me a couple of rows was Rickover and his, so I was sitting across from Rickover. And he would just sit there and glower, and had this you people. He learned something. I didn't, but he did. Anyway, so there were a lot of - yeah, there's a lot of - I mean, I just learned a great deal being here, about people and just science and so on. So, now as I said, I did this project, which to me is probably the best thing I ever did in my life, but nobody believes it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Nobody believes it.
MR. VASLOW: So is it wrong or right? I don't know. So I still believe it, but -
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me about that. You want to tell me about that project?
MR. VASLOW: Oh, it was something to do with the chemistry of water, and I was making some measurements. And normally, say, you were adding some salt to water and you measured the density, the volume, how the volume increases. So what I found was that, instead of increasing, at one point there was kind of a little bump in this thing. And this was very small, very hard to measure, and I thought I got it quite a few times, and repeated myself and so on. I thought it was a valid measurement. But at the same time, in chemistry, there was a lot of what people were finding - claiming to find kinks in their curves. So there was some sort of a little kink in the curve, and when people looked more carefully, there weren't any kinks; it was just an error or something like that. So they were - so the masses, the authorities, were just unwilling to look at anything that was supposedly a kink. And here, when I was coming up with these kinks and curves.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: So I suppose that's a main reason for not believing it. So anyway, so this is probably my big disappointment in life, that it's still - I still don't know.
MR. MCDANIEL: You still - they kind of shut you down. They didn't let you continue on, and -
MR. VASLOW: They just - well, it just ended.
MR. MCDANIEL: It just ended.
MR. VASLOW: Well, things were getting tough, and the labs were having a downgrading, as they do fairly frequently. So anyway -
MR. MCDANIEL: What did you think of Weinberg?
MR. VASLOW: Well, I don't know. That's a hard question to ask. I've talked with him a couple of times, on a couple of occasions. I think, well, okay, I'll go back a little.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MR. VASLOW: Back when the - back in the - probably in the '40s or so, there were the people, the scientists at the Lab, were hoping that the Lab would be taken over by the University of Chicago. But anyway, they turned it over to Union Carbide. This was to be sort of a - just an industrial base type thing, no basic research. Well, under Weinberg's leadership, I think, they had a small nuclear reactor, just no power at all, and they - there was this little reactor. Just can we put a little shielding around it and increase the pace a little? Yeah, here, this is working so nice. Can we add a little power and make a little shielding more? And this kept growing and growing, and - until finally, Weinberg, I guess, developed this idea of this Graphite Reactor, which is there, which is - finally the AEC let us do - let Oak Ridge do science. So this is one of the things we owe to Weinberg. So probably, perhaps, this persistence in developing the reactor is really what allowed Oak Ridge to grow into a major - I think a major research, scientific research center.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. VASLOW: Of course with the Neutron Facility and the computers, it is now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Yes, absolutely. It is. It is. All right, well, thank you, sir.
MR. VASLOW: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us, and -
MR. VASLOW: Well, I hope I haven't bored you, or -
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, no, not at all. Not at all.
MR. VASLOW: I may have said too much.
MR. MCDANIEL: I've been around Oak Ridge long enough, and heard enough stories, to where most of the time now I can kind of follow along. I kind of understand what people are talking about, unless they get too technical. But when you talk about people and events and places and things such as that -
MR. VASLOW: Well, I try to avoid being too technical.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, thank you so much, sir. I appreciate it.
MR. VASLOW: Okay.
[End of Interview]